Monster Costume, the West Seattle based software development company which has grown from five employees to 17 in the last year is about to introduce the new version of their best selling iPad software title and launch a new retail business on Alki.

Last year, Monter Costume became high profile when the produced an interactive children's iPad title called Bartleby's Book of Buttons Vol 1 The Faraway Island. It swiftly became the top selling children's title on iTunes and remained there for weeks. For a short time, into early June that first title is being offered FREE. Once version 2 arrives in mid-June, officially titled,"Bartleby's Book of Buttons Vol.2 The Button At the Bottom of the Sea," Vol. 1 will go back to being a paid title. In three months Volume 3 will arrive and shortly thereafter iPhone versions will be available. There's also an update in the works for Vol.1.

The new title is bigger, with more plot, more story, more characters and it won't be "fully concluded" meaning it will have a cliffhanger ending to be resolved when Vol. 3 is available, likely before the end of the year. The new game will also offer "badges" to be collected as players unlock certain puzzles.

A new website for the title www.bookofbuttons.com is now active and every week a new button will appear, as a teaser for the game itself. That site was built in HTML 5 and built by developer Blake Shaw.

That's not all. The original title is getting localization for ten languages including Korean and Chinese and other markets they are seeing good downloads from. It's currently being downloaded thousands of times a day.

Monster Costume is also working on a highly innovative tool that has the potential to revolutionize book publishing for tablet computers.

The "Book Engine" is a software tool that will allow authors and artists to create versions of their titles for tablets with no code writing experience necessary.

That tool is in use inside the company now and Nate True of Monster Costume said, "It's getting very quick to develop pages for Bartleby. It's getting to the point where we can develop the pages at the speed that the artist draws them."

The tool itself is built as a layer on top of of Apple's iOS to make it simple to develop interactive book pages. At first, as the product moves from beta to public release they plan on working with artists and authors (not publishers) to further refine the book engine. "At first we won't know exactly which features to keep in the product but eventually a single artist will be able to assemble a book on their own," said True.

It will be available for the iPad at first and later likely for Android powered tools. That software should be released for use in September or October but while it's still in 'beta' or testing mode, the company is also using it to create iPad versions on behalf of certain clients.

President and CEO of the company Kyle Kinkade said, "We're going to have books ready to go this summer including text books, interactive children's books, technical books, and others. We expect to have a catalog of more than 100 titles by the end of September. We're talking to a lot of authors and they want to publish on as many platforms as possible."

Kinkade and True are former employees of a company called Tapulous where they created the most downloaded iPhone app of its time, Tap Tap Revenge. The creation of the Book Engine has gotten them even more attention, "We've had a huge response," Kinkade said, "A lot of people know Nate and I and they know what we did with Tapulous, and how we defined gaming for multi-touch. As soon as I told them that Nate and I were working on how to redefine books on multi-touch, people just sign up."

Monster Costume operates out of a duplex just off Alki, where the developers work on parts of their own software titles as well as creating graphics and functionality for other local software companies.

The company recently got an infusion of cash from an investor, Daryl Butcher Gordon, who is both a developer and entrepreneur, creating a company called Thriftbooks.com. He has now become the Chief Technical Officer for the firm. "I started doing computer programming when I was 8 years old, and I had an old VIC 20 that I wrote programs in, in BASIC," he said. "My entire life I wanted to be a computer game programmer but as opportunity presented itself I became an enterprise software developer and it's really exciting to end my enterprise development and become involved in game software development."

The West Seattle Herald first told you about the company last summer here.
Their growth has been rapid and steady as we reported here.

As a kind of quirky side project, Kinkade also said he plans on opening a hot dog stand on Alki in the next few weeks. "I really liked being outside, a lot, last summer but I was always stuck inside so I want to be the first CEO to ever run a company and be a hot dog salesman as well," Kinkade said.

"Alki Dog" will be located adjacent to Wheel Fun Rentals on Alki in the 2500 block of Alki Ave. s.w. The website for Alki Dog will be active later next week.

They will serve regular beef hot dogs, vegan, vegetarian, kielbasa, and polish sausages and be open Wednesday through Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Most dogs with toppings will cost approximately $4.00.